Digital Art and the Book Covers of Pinaki De as Response Text

Abstract

Traditional Literary Studies have often overlooked the transition of Book Cover illustration due to a disciplinary bias towards the written text over the visual narratives, dismissing them as mere commercial necessities. The paper intends to move beyond this prejudice by focusing on select covers designed by Pinaki De (B.T. Road/ The Hollow, The Garden of Solitude, Lost and Found, Mice in Men), through the analysis of the dynamics of text with their respective Cover, and show the Book Covers as intermedially remediating the text by the deployment of digital art that helps transcend the structural limitations of conventional art; as a result, they emerge as the first available visual reader response attached to the physicality of the text; for instance, in the Cover of Mice in Men, the effect of image morphing facilitated by digital pen and template establishes a visual connection between the visible eyebrow of the third panel and the mice of the first and final panel. The rendering bears no direct connection with the text but reflects the reader response of the illustrator; hence, a nuanced dialogue between Book Cover, the text, and the author emerges, intimating a new kind of visibility that is a symptomatic reflection of the decentralizing politics of the digital era, that, in scholarship and practice, intends to create “a new ‘we’ of community”. Thus, the paper claims a redefining of the significance of Book Covers in contemporary literary discourse and proclaims the liminal space between digital and humanities as more collegial and humanitarian, than ever before.